1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless services. More particularly, the present invention relates to determining and implementing rules for one or more base stations of a wireless service.
2. Description of Related Art
In a wireless network, terminals, such as telephones, are generally connected wirelessly to a given base station at any given moment. In a typical system, an idle terminal receives signals from one or more base stations in the vicinity. If there is more than one signal present, the terminal analyzes the signals and connects itself to the base station associated with the strongest signal. If there is an incoming communication being directed to a specific terminal, a signal is sent from the connected base station to activate the terminal. The type of activation is often defined by the user; for example, the user may program a terminal to ring at a particular volume, or to vibrate instead.
Known wireless systems may offer additional options to users, such as the ability to program voice mail and e-mail features, with or without a temporal limit. For example, a user may choose to direct all voice calls directly to voice mail, whether the terminal is in range of a base station or not. A user may desire to forward calls, either without ringing the terminal or after a predetermined number of rings, to another phone number. Additionally, a user may wish to allow only e-mails and/or SMS messages to activate the terminal, so that during a meeting the user is not disturbed by callers. On the other hand, a user may wish to forward e-mails, especially those over a given size, to another e-mail account. Of course, some wireless systems provide combinations of these options and more.
In the known wireless systems, it is usually up to the user to define the rules governing the reaction of the terminal to an incoming call or message. Although a network administrator may have control over some rules, such as whether incoming calls activate terminals, such control is often limited. For example, the network administrator might only be able to control the reaction of terminals to all incoming calls, but not be able to distinguish between calls emanating from a particular location or exchange and other calls. Even if an administrator's actions can define the parameters of terminal activation when the terminal is within a geographical location, the administrator might not have any control over outgoing calls.
Some known systems can determine the location of terminals with varying degrees of precision and accuracy, for example the systems disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,608,723 to Felsenstein for “Methods and Systems for Secure Wireless Communication Within a Predetermined Boundary”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,666,662 to Shibuya for a “Method for Detecting the Location of a Mobile Terminal”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,304 to Grube et al. for a “Method for Providing Communication Services Based on Geographical Location”, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,091,959 to Souissi et al. for a “Method and Apparatus in a Two-Way Wireless Communication System For Location-Based Message Transmission”. Many systems that determine the location of terminals are costly to implement, though the ability to determine whether or not a terminal is inside a pre-defined and pre-determined area of space at a given time may help in setting the rules governing that terminal.